Cookie Day is at my house on Friday, and I am…oh, what’s the phrase I’m looking for? Ah yes: mad with power.

It’s an entire day devoted to baked goods. An entire day. And I get minions assistance from Mom and Grandma. And so it feels, today, before I am actually neck-deep in butter and sugar, like the sky’s the limit. I am marshaling my recipes, inventorying the pantry, making one last shopping list, although nobody is fooled, if we run out of things, we will just go get more. Because Cookie Day is implacable. Cookie Day cannot be stopped by a mere insufficiency of jam. What kind of filling will the chocolate sandwich cookies have this year? What shapes will we make the fruit shortbreads? Anything might happen, people. And we’ve got to be ready for it. Dough chilled. Cutters poised. This is it, this is what we practice for with random brownies and loaves of banana bread all year. This is the big time.

Okay, so yes, I’m ridiculous. And yes, I try stunt-baking other times of the year. But other times of the year, I do it alone. I don’t have two even more experienced bakers saying things like, “We can try that if you want, honey,” or just making the Grandma eyebrow of skeptical amusement.

The secret I keep telling people, the secret they keep forgetting, is that I don’t actually like eating cookies all that much. Most baked goods receive from me a hearty and heartfelt meh. But making cookies! Making candy, making bread! I love making things. Making things is the best.

I have friends in Madison who host a group cookie day in December, where up to 20 people vie for counter space, oven time, and general chaos ensues. The first thing I do when I retire, and can go to Madison more than once a year, will be to book tickets for cookie baking day.

When we were house-hunting several years in a row in my childhood, my family came up with a measurement for kitchens. Kitchens are measured in butts. Mine is a two-butt kitchen, maybe a two and a half butt kitchen. The only way we manage to do this with three butts is a) we have worked together my entire life and also b) we try to arrange a lot of work to be seated at the table rather than in the workspace if at all possible. We have talked about how one of these years we will have to include a Moo, but her butt is small, belonging as it does to a six-year-old. I'm not sure we could fit more in this kitchen.

I have remembered that my favorite cookie from last year was the dark chocolate sandwich cookie with the hazelnut cream filling, but I haven't the time/energy to go to the Persian grocery to buy hazelnut cream, so I am making my own today, and we will see how that goes.